n the late summer of 1913, George Sawle brings the charming, aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance to his family`s modest home. The shared intimacies of this weekend link the Sawle and Valance families irrevocably, becoming legendary events in a larger story, told and interpreted in different ways over the coming century. Throughout this richly comic history of sexual mores and literary reputation we follow the two families, in a series of widely spaced episodes, through startling changes in fortune and circumstance. An impeccably nuanced exploration of changing taste, class and social etiquette, The Strange`s Child, written in deliciously witty and observant prose, is an enthralling novel from one of the finest writers in the English language. `With The Stranger`s Child, an already remarkable talent unfurls into something spectacular` Sunday Times `A remarkable, unmissable achievement ...One leaves the novel with a sense of the truly extraordinary` Independent `Elegant, seductive and extremely enjoyable to read ...The Stranger`s Child will no doubt be one of the best novels published this year` Guardian